KTS TRUNKLINE NEWSLETTER
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Mulch: How Does It Benefit Your Trees & Landscape?
Adding wood or leaf mulch will provide a multitude of benefits to your trees and landscape beds. These benefits include soil temperature management, nutrients through decomposition, water retention, landscape aesthetics, physical protection from foot traffic or lawn mowing equipment and much more.
As you walk through the woods, the ground feels a bit spongy and soft, that is called the duff layer.
In our urban environments, we often lack a duff layer because we plant trees in mowed lawns or areas that are continually manicured and cleared of vegetative material. Applying mulch around our trees helps to replace this lack of a duff layer; it breaks down, much like the material in a natural setting, which helps to improve the organic content of the soil. This improves the structure and nutrient availability in the soil for our urban trees.
Growing the Tree Care Work Force
Those that have been involved in the tree care industry for several years may have asked themselves at one point or another, “What will the tree care industry look like in 10 or 20 years?” and “Who will take my place when I retire?”
KTS Director of Operations, Paul Filary, along with other members of the Illinois Arborist Association (IAA), created a task force focusing on building the industry’s workforce. The goal for 2020 was to increase awareness of our industry by representing careers in arboriculture through IAA at several career exploration events for high school and college-age students.
Events in which IAA and professional tree care were represented was at the D211 Career Expo in Palatine, as well as in Fox Lake at Grant Community High School “Spring Into Careers” Career Fair. Over 100 professions were represented at each event. This gave students the opportunity to see the diversity of career paths, find a part-time or full-time job, sign-up for an internship, or simply ask questions to learn more about careers in relation to their personal interests.